"Thunderbolts*" - Review

Years after the death of her sister, Russian spy and trained assassin Yelena (Florence Pugh) is now working in wetworks for CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Juia Louis-Dreyfus) across the world, clearing her dirty laundry. Unsatisfied with her work, and longing for something to break her free of this anhedonia, she takes one last job for the troubled director (in hot water over her various operations) to eliminate a thief at one of her facilities. There, she bumps into anti-social misfit woman able to phase through objects Ava (Hannah John-Kamen); grouchy asshole and government backed, scandal-ridden Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell); old friend and fellow assassin "Taskmaster" (Olga Kurylenko) and a lost young man named Bob (Lewis Pullman). Forced to work together when it becomes clear they are being disposed of, the group go on the lam and seek revenge on Fontaine, drawing them into the orbit of washed up Russian supersoldier Alexei "Red Guardian" Shostakov (David Harbour), bionic "dying inside" Congressman and former assassin/supersoldier Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Fontaine's various schemes, a rather dangerous individual, and Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan, forever the best thing about any movie)...

Marvel, the juggernaut studio, have been having a bloody rough time as of late. Underperforming films, a lack of direction, and a death spiral of cannibalising other people's art with this "Multiverse" horseshit (soon to come to an ugly head with the hideous, creatively bankrupt and not-starring Dan Stevens as Dr Doom "Doomsday"), coupled with a recent uncoupling from their wife-beating major arc villain have come together in a brew so noxious that one forgets they were atop the world and are still being imitated and mimicked for their style of fun blockbuster universes.
"Thunderbolts*", against the odds, comes charging out of the gate to remind us why their moves appeal and are fun, and is among their best efforts in years. They've fucking needed it.
Playing to the strengths (a fun ragtag, hodge-podge group of misfits thrust together and forced to work together) and forgoing many of its weaknesses (an over reliance on quips, weak final acts, sloppy finales, and a lack of focus) to forge something which would fit right at home with their earlier and middle efforts. It's rather refreshing just having the movie be "here's a bunch of people, attempting to accomplish a task, and bonding along the way" rather than hopping between timelines and choking to death on bloated references and groundwork for a movie about Grimmo the Taxi Driver or whatever they have going on. On paper it's an ensemble piece, but in practice focuses on Yelena's arc (there's a neat little opening involving a guinea pig in a maze, and some very "West Side Story"-esque overhead shadow shots) and, later, Bob, both of which are excellent. The movie is a fun romp, with excellent details and character bits (I appreciated Walker punching out a character late in the film, very telling and humanizing...) and Harbour's Red Guardian threatens to steal the show as the embarassing dad figure keen on them being a team so he can relive his glory days; but even the underdeveloped characters such as Ava and John get enough to feel real and grounded and have fun with the team. Refreshingly the film takes genuine swings and reaches for themes and ideas, and the final third act is entirely about mental illness and trauma, and (somewhat excellently) has the message of "one cannot cure mental illness, or deny it and despise it, it is a part of one's identity, and you deal with it through love, acceptance and understanding from those who support you and appreciate you." It was good to see.
The more I thought on it the more I liked it, even when it does the usual "fight the big explodey man", it draws back, remembers it is about characters, and rolls with the themes and punches. I appreciated this film and had a good time with it.

"Night Swim" - Review

The Waller family move yet again as baseball star father Ray (Wyatt Russell) is beginning to suffer from multiple sclerosis. They end up in a quaint, well-to-do neighbourhood, in a house with a pool! But as mother Eve (Kerry Condon), daughter Izzy (Amelie Hoeferle) and son Elliot (Gavin Walker) settle in, something strange and dark lurks within the pool...

January horror is back, baby!
The movie thinks it's "It Follows" but is actually "The Curse of La Larona"!
Okay, that was mean.
So, not quite. This isn't a never ending trainwreck or torrent of trash like we usually can come to relish and treasure in these cold opening months.
But the movie is more competently made, staid, steady work with no real tension or atmosphere, hitting the usual beats and things you've come to expect from this kind of movie (right down to a visit to an elderly woman who tells them how the plot works, though thankfully she is neither magic nor black), wearing a lot of influences on its sleeve:
The frequent water shots and imagery of water really wants to be "It Follows" or "Dark Water", the army of swimming pool ghosts (Jesus, that concept is such a "King at his most coke-fuelled 80s output") are "Insidious" (fitting due to Wan being producer), its father-son dynamic is trying to be recent Blumhouse movies and, oddly, "Pet Sematary" in many regards, the possession-based finale is trying to be "Hereditary" or "The Babadook" (right down to the children having to save the day), the aforementioned old woman is very much "The Ring"

(Any excuse to post Kyoko Koizumi)

The film relies on jump scares of the more 2000s kind, but they did their job for the young women in front of me at the cinema, and is actually better off when it is focusing on the child's eye view of the pool, and the darkest murkiest depths of it, making you think that there is something within it. The quickest way to terrify me (well, second fastest: "It Follows" being the first. Watch that fucking movie) is to show me deep, deep water. Even a pool will do. The longer shots, the quieter moments, they can draw you in. Contrasting them with the pouring of water, the long aerial shots, the murkiness of the depths: the imagery comes together.
But the atmosphere is never truly there.
Honestly, it would have worked super well as an 80s/90s throwback of a haunted monster in the pool.
Fun side note: the opening is set in 1992, as a throwback, and you can expect to see a lot more of those settings now, they'll be the new "80s" for TV and movies.
It has, however, more ambitions than many of this era, and I respect that. I don't make the "Pet Sematary" (the remake) comparisons lightly: the acting is good across the board, and the characters are likeable if not super lovable, and I liked the healing angle. They have a good planting and payoff of a batting signal, and the arc and message of it are a man turning away from the past and his career focus and moving that focus to his family and their needs. That kind of works, but feels rushed.
It's fine.
It isn't "Fantasy Island".
Still, the soundtrack by Mark Korven (who did "Cube" and "The Black Phone") is good. I wish director and writer Bryce McGuire all the best, honestly he has potential.

"The Woman in the Window" Review - From the Vaults

 "The Woman In the Window" is not so much a movie so much as it is a selection of things spliced together. Every actor involved seems to have been given a different script and lost half of the pages, so scenes come across as rushed and disjointed, even (I.E especially) when introducing characters and plots.

Amy Adams: The Hunt for a Better Agent

Amy Adams (Isla Fisher's greatest character, how has she not won an Oscar for this?) plays an agoraphobic child psychologist who keeps drinking with her medication, having paranoid thoughts, and letting random fucking strangers into her house with no forethought and getting surprised when things are weird. One of these things is not intentional on the  part of the screenwriters.

When she believes she witnesses a murder across the street, things apparently get weird, having apparently been normal until now...

It's fucking bad, guys.

For such a pedigree cast in front of and behind the camera (Isla Fisher's persona, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bryan Tyree Henry and Anthony Mackie; with the screenplay written by Tracy Letts and directed by Joe Wright) this is perplexingly, baffling misfired. It's like they wanted to make "Rear Window", but got distracted and lost their script. It's choppily edited, characters are just bizarre upon introduction and throughout, it tries to make it seem as if our lead is suffering delirium, but forgets that the audience is supposed to be able to have one basic point of reference so that they do not question their own sanity and existence; the one good character gets murdered in a fucking hilarious way; there are strange tangential quirks and leaps in logic from everybody involved, our lead character is just a nasty person, and much more. 

Fun fact:

In the opening 30 seconds I joked that "this is the first character we've met, they're the killer." before any killing, plot or characterisation had happened (that takes about 30 minutes, by the way, fuck me...)

I was absolutely correct.

I've seen enough bad movies that I am able to think on their level.

The best thing about this movie is the story behind its psychopathic author.